There is a moment every spring when Aintree falls quiet for a beat.
The horses circle at the start. Jockeys steady them. The crowd waits. Then the tapes rise, and one of the most demanding races in British sport begins.
The Grand National has never been just a horse race. It is a test of stamina, judgment, jumping and nerve, run over a course that has shaped some of racing’s most famous stories. Since its first official running in 1839, it has produced moments that still feel hard to believe: a fallen rider giving his name to the race’s most famous fence, a 100/1 outsider winning after chaos stopped the field, and one horse returning so often, and so well, that he came to define Aintree itself.
That is why the race still holds people. To understand the Grand National, it helps to look past the finish line and into the stories that built it.
A race born in Liverpool
To see why the Grand National still carries that kind of pull, it helps to go back to where it began. Long before television audiences and modern safety reforms, there was a bold idea in Liverpool: create a race people would talk about far beyond the city.
The race’s roots lie in Aintree, where William Lynn helped develop a course on land leased from the Earl of Sefton. The first official running took place on 26 February 1839 as the Grand Liverpool Steeplechase, and it was won by Lottery, ridden by Jem Mason. Rail travel helped the event grow quickly, turning a local spectacle into a race with national attention. For readers who want the official event guide, the Aintree Grand National page is the clearest starting point.
Lottery, Becher and the birth of a myth
The first running gave the race more than a winner. It gave it a story that helped turn a new event into a national one.
Lottery won the 1839 race, but Captain Martin Becher became part of racing folklore after he was unseated at a brook on the far side of the course. That obstacle became known as Becher’s Brook, and the name has lasted ever since. It is one of the earliest signs of what would make the Grand National different from other major races: the course itself could create legends.
The fences that make legends
That early drama also revealed something central to the Grand National. The course itself would shape the race’s identity just as much as the horses who ran it.
The National Course is built around 16 fences, 14 of them jumped twice, for a total of 30 efforts over a distance of 4 miles, 2 furlongs and 74 yards. It is the longest race in British jump racing, and its layout helps explain why the Grand National so often resists prediction. The official Grand National fences guide is useful here because it shows how the sport itself presents these obstacles to fans.
Becher’s Brook
Becher’s Brook remains the course’s most famous fence, not just because of its history but because of the way it lives in the imagination of the race. Even after modifications over time, it still carries more story than almost any fence in British racing.
The Chair
The Chair is the tallest fence on the course and one of the most recognisable. Its size and the ditch on the take-off side give it a reputation that even casual viewers tend to remember.
Canal Turn
Canal Turn is famous for what happens after the jump. Horses land and then face a sharp turn, which makes positioning and balance matter as much as bravery.
Foinavon Fence
Fence 7 and 23 now bear the name Foinavon, a reminder that one result can change the language of the whole course.
The greatest upsets
Once you understand the fences, the race’s chaos makes more sense. The Grand National has always had room for the unexpected, and sometimes the unexpected is what people remember most.
In 1928, only two horses finished the race. Tipperary Tim, sent off at 100/1, won after a punishing renewal that became part of National folklore. It remains the record for the fewest finishers in the race’s history.
Then came 1967. Foinavon was another 100/1 outsider, and at the 23rd fence a loose horse caused a pile-up that left much of the field in chaos. Foinavon, far enough behind to avoid the worst of it, was steered around the trouble by jockey John Buckingham and went on to win. That finish matters because it captures the race at its most unpredictable without reducing it to luck alone. Judgment still had to meet the moment. Readers who want old results and race-by-race context can use the Racing Post Grand National results archive.
Red Rum: the horse that owned Aintree
Yet the National is not only a race of accidents and outsiders. Every so often, a horse seems to meet Aintree on its own terms and change the race’s history.
No horse is more closely tied to the Grand National than Red Rum. He won in 1973, 1974 and 1977, and finished second in 1975 and 1976. That record still stands as the defining achievement in the modern history of the race. Red Rum did not just win at Aintree. He made repeated excellence on that course seem normal, which may be the rarest thing any National horse has done. His Racing Post record is still one of the simplest ways to see the shape of that achievement.
His story also gave the race a hero people could hold onto. Trained by Ginger McCain in Southport, close to Aintree, Red Rum became bigger than racing, and when he died in 1995 he was buried at the Aintree winning post. It was the sort of ending only the Grand National could have made feel inevitable.
War, survival and reinvention
Red Rum gave the Grand National one of its greatest chapters. But the race itself has had to survive moments when its future looked far less certain.
The National did not remain at Aintree without interruption. During the First World War, from 1916 to 1918, the race was run at Gatwick. During the Second World War, Aintree was requisitioned and the race was not run from 1941 to 1945. Those breaks matter because they show that even an event this famous has never been immune to larger forces.
In later decades, the race also had to adapt commercially and structurally to protect its place in the sporting calendar. That longer history helps explain why the Grand National still feels both old and modern at the same time. It has kept its identity by changing when it had to.
The modern race
That history matters because the modern Grand National is not a museum piece. It has changed with the times, even as it tries to keep the character that made it famous.
Today, the field is capped at 34 runners rather than 40, following safety changes introduced from 2024. The race still covers the National Course and still asks the same basic questions of stamina and jumping, but it now sits under much closer scrutiny on equine welfare and race safety. The British Horseracing Authority welfare information is a useful official reference for that part of the story.
That does not weaken the race’s meaning. It changes the way the meaning is discussed. The Grand National now lives in two traditions at once: one built on sporting memory and public ritual, and one shaped by modern expectations around risk, responsibility and animal welfare. The tension is real, and any honest modern article should say so plainly.
When is the 2026 Grand National?
That tension now sits at the heart of the race. But when Aintree fills each spring, the appeal is still easy to recognise.
The 2026 Randox Grand National takes place at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool on Saturday 11 April 2026, as part of a three-day festival running from Thursday 9 April to Saturday 11 April. Anyone looking for official event details, tickets or schedule information should use the 2026 Grand National festival page and the Grand National Day page.
Why Britain still watches
The Grand National lasts only a few minutes. Its hold on the public has lasted nearly two centuries.
That endurance comes from more than betting or nostalgia. The race offers something rare in modern sport: a sense that history is still active in the present. The names change. The field changes. The safety rules change. But Aintree still asks the same hard question every April: which horse can handle the course, the pace, the fences and the occasion?
That is why Britain still watches.
